I know. Its a shocking title. But what we are going to see today deserves such ! When we say India is full of innumerable treasures littered around ( literally) - i didn’t know it would be so true. Me and Shankar were scouting for interesting sites in and around Arakkonam in his hired cab when at a distance we spotted a familiar shape. Could it be it?

We screamed at the driver to stop and sprinted across the fields much the disdain of the grazing cows. As we edged closer the colossal structure seemed to take vishwaroopam in front of our very eyes.

A familiar rustle and a shiny tail slithered through the vegetation as we kept walking towards the ” Trees”. The snake must have been bemused as he failed to register anything in us. We were too shocked already to do so.

A magnificent brick temple was being pillaged by nature and humans. Its a testament to the wisdom of the ancient architects that they could build such with just bricks to withstand and stand despite this.

The memory of the slithering snake fresh we edged gingerly to the entrance to view the inside.

How many times have you seen a small innocuous plant growing on top of the temple Vimana or Gopura, How much effort it would take to get a few volunteers to clear and clean them at that stage. Because it was not done see the impact.

The trees are practically splitting the entire temple into two as though driving a wedge into them. Its a pity that such a beautifully designed and constructed brick temple has fallen prey to this due to our gross negligence.

The real loss must be seen to believed. The size of this temple dwarfs the 20foot pole next to it, but then the trees have won this battle.

The villagers ofcourse have no problem, they have floated a new temple ( which was already listing to one side even before consecration) right next to the ailing edifice, painted bright yellow., but no amount of such can erase the responsibility of ours of robbing India of another of its heritage treasure, entombed in vegetation.

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But these type of temples are plenty in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. As you rightly said people ignore the antiquity and go for new temple constructions. Wherever I see such temples, I used to tell the locals to take care. They also used to tell me ‘dont bother sir, we will go for new one’.